Occasional Progress Report #11 -- Mar. 4, 2014

Hi everyone:

Here’s the latest on what’s been happening with 2CUL Technical Services Integration (TSI). This report, along with past updates, is also available in the Project Reports section of the TSI wiki.

1.  TSI Phase 2 is underway. By way of reminder, Phase 2 begins the incremental integration of technical services workflows, practices, policies, and projects in ways that are mutually beneficial to both institutions. There have been some early successes.

• Cornell has long held a tax-free Amazon corporate account for book ordering.  This has numerous advantages, especially in timely order and receipt of rush material.  After discussion and consideration of the benefits, Columbia now has its own tax free account with Amazon.
• Up to now Cornell and Columbia have each supported and funded travel for a PCC CONSER representative.  Robert Rendall and Chew Chiat Naun proposed joint representation for 2CUL on the CONSER Operations Committee with Robert representing both libraries.  The benefit of this is that it represents permanent commitment to integration of our contributions to the development of national serials cataloging standards and sets a precedent for information sharing and reallocation of cost savings for conferences.  In addition, OCLC funds the travel portion of the meetings and this year at least we will be able to use this travel money to send Sarah Elman to attend the BIBCO portion of the meeting.  The Library of Congress is taking this as a wave of the future saying “we realize that shared
  technical services departments may become more common in the future. We
  have added the topic to the PCC Steering Committee Meeting agenda in June.”
• The E-Resources Working Group has been very active.  Their proposal to buy Callisto as a joint tool for e-resources trouble shooting was accepted and is moving forward.  You can read about Callisto and its value for 2CUL on the wiki.
• The E-Resources Working Group was also approved to license and implement the Serials Solutions Resource Manager Consortial Edition  and related services.  This is an enormous step toward integration as we will be using one system for e-resource management which will allow easier collaboration, shared trouble shooting and better service over all.  This will also greatly simplify system migration to Alma in 2016. Joyce McDonough and Jesse Koennecke with support from Adam Chandler as TSI Steering Committee Liaison are planning Cornell’s data migration and many other implementation details this spring.
• The TSI Steering Committee has been working on documentation for Phase 2, including how to measure work across functional areas, a governance plan and a  Proof Registry to record the success or failure of projects, investigations and tests.

2.   The Columbia Cataloging Team with Kate Harcourt was invited by Pamela Graham, Director of Global Studies, to talk about TSI, and hear about collecting collaborations in global studies that may have an impact on technical services. Both sides learned a lot and we will continue to meet to learn about initiatives that may be appropriate for 2CUL.

3.  Columbia and Cornell are sharing expertise in web archiving.  This collaboration is described in "2CUL Web Archiving" (co-authored by Jason Kovari and Alex Thurman) in Feb. 2014 issue of Cornell's library newsletter, Kaleidoscope -- http://www.library.cornell.edu/staffweb/kaleidoscope/index.html#technical.

4.  Kate, Bob, Damon and Rob each gave a presentation  about 2CUL at the January 31, 2014 CCLIP (Committee of Columbia Library & Information Professionals) meeting. You can see all 2CUL Technical Services Integration articles and presentations on our wiki.

5.  Columbia’s Mark Wilson has been promoted to Director, Monograph Processing Services Division.  Mark chairs the Batch Processing Working Group and serves on JSMIN (the Joint Senior Managers Integration Network).

6.  Cornell’s Bill Kara will serve on the search committee for the temporary appointment of an eJournal Preservation librarian in the Continuing & Electronic Resources Management Division (CERM).

That’s all for now.  Stay tuned for more information about Phase 2. As always, please feel free to direct questions to your supervisors or to any member of the TSI Steering Committee: Jim LeBlanc, Adam Chandler, Colleen Major, Boaz Nadav-Manes, Robert Rendall, or me.

- Kate Harcourt (on behalf of the 2CUL TSI Steering Committee)